A tribute to and catalogue of the works of Alexander "Hugin" Wieser, founder of ambient black metal band Uruk Hai and many other side-projects, including Hrossharsgrani, Hrefnesholt, Elisabetha, B-Machina, Ceremony of Innocence and more!
Here you will find my thoughts on his work and details on the releases as drawn from items in my personal collection, forming a fuller catalogue of his work than is currently available elsewhere online

Sunday, 27 September 2015

Tryby promotional flyer

Band:URUK HAIItem: A promotional flyer from the Polish label Tryby for what were - at the time, circa April 2012 - new releases. All feature Uruk Hai releases, hence the attribution to that band for this post.

Back in the early days of Honour and Darkness it wasn't unusual for Nazgul to manage 15-20 posts in a single month. Times have changed at the Castle since those heady days, not least because of the demands placed on your scribe's time by 3 year old Nazgul Junior, plus boringly mundane things like 'work' to contend with. However, those early years of posts on the blog were peppered with short items on various bits and pieces of paper and other ephemera that Nazgul had accumulated over the years, mostly promotional literature from some label, distro or other such outfit. Times were that such items were plentiful and lined the library shelves just waiting to be featured, but the flood has inexorably turned into a trickle and it's a rare flyer now that's not been featured before.

Happily though, there's always an exception to the rule (unless Nazgul has featured this one before - in which case it's further proof of a slow decline in mental capacity!). Channelling the spirit of blog posts of yore then, here's something in that vein to enjoy, which comes apropos of nothing other than a bit of late spring cleaning in the computer files that unearthed this picture!

The Tryby label from Poland always was a rather strange little thing: quite productive for a couple of years from their inception in around 2011, they released what are now some of the more collectible releases in the Uruk Hai repertoire: consider the "Gorgoroth" 6CD box-set from 2011, for example. They also reissued (in a second edition pressing after the Smell The Stench label had first dibs) a series of demos in 3" format, including "Elves & Men"; "Gil-galad"; "Nargothrond"; "Barbarians" and "Return To The Green Fields" in 2012. In addition Tryby popped out an extravagant 4 x 3" CD version of "Lothlorien" for good measure too, and for a time it seemed that this was the label to watch.

Then - equally oddly - sometime in 2012 they seemed to wind up and disappear. An semi-official Uruk Hai metal tin box-setwas compiled by them to house batches of the (presumably unsold) 3" CD series, in a tiny edition of just 6 sets. This wasn't entirely an official release so much as it seemed to be a marketing coup by the label themselves to generate funds, a plan that one has to assume failed as they disappeared soon after.

The flyer that you see here, therefore, must hail from the 2012-13 time period and advertises a range of these releases for your delight. Oddly - and this is truly strange - there's no contact details recorded on the picture anywhere. No email address, no website, no nothing! That was always a common theme whenever Tryby issued something: where on earth does one actually get it from? Nazgul had more than a few enquiries from confused prospective customers over the years, and it was only thanks to an chance email contact address found somewhere or other that any form of correspondence to the label was possible from Castle Nazgul.

There's one other bonus that's come out of today's post, and that's the illustration on the left of the flyer of the "Tales Of Glory & Mystery" box-set. A very limited edition set, it's one that somehow has escaped the merciless snare that entraps and compels releases from throughout the decades to feature on Honour and Darkness. The all-seeing lidless fiery eye has clearly missed a trick here!

And yet ... mysteriously (albeit very aptly, given the title of the compilation) the item has gone missing from the Castle Library. Hopefully this is temporary, but it remains most baffling. One can only hope the Castle Monkey is not to blame for this perplexing turn of events. Nazgul will have to search his crumbling lair from top to bottom to look out this glittering prize....The other two pieces shown on this flyer - "Dagor Dagorath" and "Long Before The Creation" - are, mercifully, exactly where Nazgul left them!